THE HEALING HEART
Be very still, and open your
heart to the ripples of healing.
Go on. Let them in !
Open your feelings to the
hope of peace, of calm, of being free.. feel yourself relax..
Like ripples emotions come to you.
You can feel them in your wrists, in the moisture of your cellular flesh.
Never reject your emotions, no matter how often you feel them.
For now allow them to wash over you
and recede, like waves over a rock. Gradually you realize that you are
not the emotions, and that for every feeling of grief, heartache, rage,
and bitterness there is an ebbing tide, the wave of feeling seems to tug
at you, ready to overwhelm you, but in it's place a new wave, salt and
stinging at first, and it too has its place. There is mighty strength in
this ocean, depths and strengths, and gentleness and merriness, the twinkling
of the surface and the eddies of deep currents. Warmth from far away and
cold deeper than any mortal cold. I do not reason these feelings away -
or criticize them. A sense of great heaviness is replaced by a sense of
deep joy, a sense of dancing light, and the drift of the cradle of love
give place to a kind of fear.
For this time i may abandon myself
to the feelings, and i begin to feel them. I do not need to fight them,
express them, deny them, enhance them. They do not control me and i do
not control them. They are there, that is all, as breath is there. This
is not chaos though it can be fearsome, it is a rhythm and a tide in life.
And if i feel shame, or guilt, doubtless there are reasons, good reasons,
for the emotions are a simple measurement, and nothing more. If I feel
unhappy, doubtless this is because there is something to be unhappy about.
I am in the ever lasting arms, and
suddenly with great bliss my heart becomes a living fountain, gushing out
free, free of the thoughts and controls and opinions which sought to clog
the stream. And as each feeling follows another i learn self awareness.
Not with an everlasting commentary.. but with a deep understanding.
Michael, Prince of Warriors, He who
is Like God, the leader of the Hosts of Heaven, the formidable opponent
of the adversary is the Archangel of Emotions. He is a great healer.
Whether you allow your emotions to
go free, to grow, to enhance your experience, your heart can be healed
and transformed. This is not to say that you must always give free run
to whatever emotion you experience at the moment, not in your behaviour
or actions anyway. But what happens when you invite this Archangel to enter
your being is that you have a new awareness and a new freedom.
You are no longer fighting emotions,
or making barriers against them, so they can no longer fool you. They can't
hide themselves as excuses for uncontrolled behaviour, they can't turn
sickly in your flesh and cause you headaches and self hatred. We begin
to realize that we can choose one emotion rather than another. For every
moment of rage will wash away, every moment of tension will lead to it's
own relief, and every moment of joy will wash over you and leave you more
clean and more at peace.
This is the midnight sun, the source
of life in the salt depths, the purging of the sorrows. You may not know
how
to change your heart, but you can allow hope to become steady in you.
Be very still, be aware of the surge
of emotions in you. Feel the presence of the new, free, clean heart, the
flow and rhythm of it. Feel the presence of the new heart of flesh, the
heart with it's reasons, the healing companion.
Look at the picture: So often we imagine
that our emotions are somehow threatening, that they will destroy and overwhelm
us if they get out. Now look again, imagine that you lie in your cot, and
that this is the shadow of a trusted and beloved adult coming to sit with
us through the night. Perhaps such an image hold terror or grief for you,
a sense of threat or of loss. Stay with it. Behind that memory stands another,
utterly compassionate, utterly protective of those who are tiny and helpless.
The archangelic being who waits in the shadows brings light unimaginable,
light which is gentle, light which reveals and heals. He will fold you
in his wings, and the terrible army with banners that rides behind him
will stand guard against every memory, everything de humanizing and harmful.
You may feel hurt, you may feel distress but you may never be harmed. This
is your new heart.
Do you feel that this is not your
style, perhaps that it is not pure ? A new heart certainly takes courage,
and silent meditation, and a lot of quiet. It takes more strength, of course,
to subject yourself to this New Heart, especially since to reach it you
have to open the cruel casket of the old one. It also takes humility. No
longer can we pretend that our feelings 'make us' do anything. We are given
largeness of soul, and powerful emotions with which to measure and experience
our relationships. We can no longer afford to be numb, or to stay in shock.
It means that even if you can't imagine a new way to feel,
that you open your emotions to the possibility of transformation:
towards a likeness with the heart of Christ.. the heart and oil of chrism.
As it is written:
"A new heart also will I give
you, .. and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will
give you an heart of flesh."
And as before we can invite the new
experience of emotion. Equally we can, always, cry "Enough for now"
